Wednesday, 30 October 2013

ARE THESE THE ONLY PEOPLE THE NSA AND GCHQ ARE NOT WATCHING? - See no Evil, Hear no Evil, Speak no Evil.

What level of anger does it take to get the Treasury and tax-collectors to move against offshore tax-evaders with the same vigor they apply to prosecuting homeland onshore tax dodgers such as electricians, dentists, plumbers, lawyers and small businesses.

The greatest harm to the nation is not local evasion - where the money stays in the economy that sweated to make it - but is tax-evasion-capital-flight where the villains not only do not pay their share to the Homeland but also gouge the whole capital sum out of the economy. Tired of hearing "America /UK can't afford..." and "Our banks have no money to finance small businesses or raise wages"? The tax-haven funds must be repatriated.STOP PRESS - 31 OCT 13 - "UK plans a register of beneficial owners of anonymous secret companies, including "offshore" companies. Developing nations lose $160 billion annually to tax-evasion". Should we celebrate a breakthrough? What is not mentioned is taxing and repatriating the $32 trillion currently offshore, growing by $1 trillion a year, of which $100 billion a year is siphoned from UK business - a total of $3 trillion - bankrupting Britain.

This short letter to The Guardian 29 Oct 2013 comments on reports that 3 senior UK tax-collectors are being quizzed by a Parliamentary committee led by Lady Margaret Hodge; a committee that fails to understand why, despite all the evidence they could want, the tax-collectors are too timid to prosecute obvious offshore crooks and get our money back from tax-havens.

Dave Monte-Carlo Hartnett was recently Head of UK tax collecting who did a much criticized deal over $5 billion of tax, with Vodafone, after a nice break in sunny Monte Carlo and months before dancing through the revolving door to become a highly paid adviser to major tax-planners and auditors - on the other side of the prison fence. All with the smiling approval of UK government Ministers.

Letter to the Guardian:

Edward Troup, tax assurance commissioner,
quizzed about 18,000 untaxed UK
Swiss account tax evaders, outed 3 years ago, told Margaret Hodge that “We
still do not have sufficient information…” (UK’s official £35bn tax gap is just
tip of iceberg, Hodge says – Guardian 29 Oct 2013). Are these 18,000,
along with the recently published 130,000
British Virgin Island accounts, the only people not monitored by GCHQ and
the NSA? Or are all UK tax collectors infected with Dave
Monte-Carlo Hartnett’s Disease?

Yours cynically – Noel Hodson, Oxford

The US tax-collectors are failing to collect about $16 trillion - the size of the national deficit. Perhaps the only thing that will re-coup our losses is to adopt the French Solution - with or without their general use of Madame Guillotine. The whole system stinks. Who will clean it up?

Monday, 28 October 2013

For our many friends overseas - here is a brief round up of the main news items preoccupying the United Kingdom today:

1) GALES IN CHANNEL - EUROPE ISOLATED*. Gale Force 11 winds reaching 99 mph have closed Dover and other ferry ports along Britain's south coast; inconveniencing thousands of Johnny Foriegners who flock to invade Britain to steal our jobs and our Health Services "Free at the Point of Delivery" and infect us with dangerous foreign-persons' viruses. (*Acknowledgement - Heavy fog in Channel - Continent cut off - The Times 22 Oct 1957)

2) WORST STORM SINCE 1987. A tree blew down in south-west England early this morning. Nobody was hurt. Heathrow and other airports have cancelled some flights. Hundreds of journalists have been rushed to hospital suffering from advanced chronic weather-forecasting-related-hysteria (WFRH).

3) TOP TAX COLLECTORS SLAPPED ON THE WRIST WITH A WET FLANNEL. Parliament is "grilling" Jim Harra, Edward Troup, Jennie Granger and other senior tax collectors about their inability to collect £35B ($56B) a year more from VIPs and Big Corporations - which is ten percent of the annual Budget; and about the collectors' conspiracies with Big Tax Advisers. But, The major treasure chest that both government and tax-collectors politely and tacitly ignore is the $3 trillion tax-free dollars illegally gouged out to tax-havens from Britain - which would pay-off all UK deficits. But we posh Brits all know that "Only little people pay tax" or borrow from loan-sharks. And the little people can go hang.

4) SPIV'S EYE BBC LICENCE FEES. Minister Grant Shaps and other tricky business spivs embedded in the present government threaten to sabotage the BBC's tax-licence-income, divert the fees to Fox News and Rupert Murdoch and dismantle the BBC "unless the BBC supports all Tory election propaganda". If the BBC does as its told and the Tories do win the next election - they will definitely abolish the BBC.

5) SPIV'S EYE NHS REVENUES. The same bunch of "Free Market Cultists" continue their relentless attacks on the National Health Service, a service funded by National Insurance Contributions taxes from all wages, to sell the profitable medical services to American corporations, leave all loss leaders with the NHS and divert the immense amount of UK health tax dollars to US insurance executives' offshore accounts.

6) SPIVS BACK LOAN-SHARKS. And the same cultists block all attempts to curb UK loan-sharks such as WONGA who charge the very poor 5,000%, a gangster's scam just joined by "Satsuma" who will only charge 800% or 1,600 times the cost of the money. Aristocrat Prime Minister David Cameron protects the loan sharks with great zeal - while the new Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Wellby - and Pope Francis - are appalled at these usurious, evil City practices.

7) SPIVS HELP BIG 6 ENERGY MONOPOLY COMPANIES TO ROB THE POOR. Shades of the arrogance of ENRON. Despite global energy prices falling, partly due to US fracking - and to the discovery of many new oil-fields, and massive new finds of frozen methane hydrates (lethal global warming gases) in Japan, China and Russia, British monopolists have just hiked household energy prices by 10% - and threaten to plunge the nation into darkness if they are taxed or curtailed. Government says it is really very, very sorry for the poor huddled "eat or heat" masses - but "Free Markets" must rule; so thousands of old cold people must die. - OK?

8)HOUSE PRICES BOOM- In Greater London and the south-east. As panic grips the owners of tax-evasion-capital-flight, as they realize the NSA and GCHQ have their data and will send in tax-collectors, citizens of dozens of cash drained dying nations are pouring their ill-gotten gains into London property; which is going up in price. The boom is spilling over into other parts as Londoners who cannot compete are priced out of the capital. Its those wonderful Free Markets again.

Wednesday, 23 October 2013

There is a third way to use
Britain’s 21,000 miles of rail tracks
and 2,516 stations (It’s either HS2 or more M-ways, rail project’s chairman
warns – Guardian 23 Oct 13). The Great Iron Horse that Crosses Prairie was
wondrous in 1780 but is now irredeemably inefficient, mostly due to the “vehicle
weight per passenger or freight-ton ratio” and safe train spacing. Any given
section of line is empty of trains for 23 hours per 24 hour day; check this from
a day on any rail bridge (take sandwiches). The town centre to centre routes
are however priceless. The answer is to tarmac the 21,000 miles exclusively for
coaches, buses, lorries and vans. This will fill the routes, bring goods to city
centres, clear existing roads, be wholly flexible and reduce passenger travel
prices by 80%. The cost/benefit analyses are entirely positive. Tarmac The
Rails! - Noel Hodson, Oxford.

Notes for non-Brits - The UK plans to spend £50 billion to carve a 100 mile high-speed rail track from London to Birmingham - HS2. The main justification is saving 20 minutes per passenger. Tickets will be beyond the reach of most pockets - so it will be a VIP train. The route is so short that the 150 mph, 450 tonne, 100 yard long train will have to start slowing down almost before it reaches maximum speed. The highly controversial route through the overcrowded UK destroys many homes and invades peaceful rural idylls. My guess is it will never be built; but influential, public servant, elderly choo-choo train advocates are pressing hard, while their opposition want the £50 billion spent on improving the whole network, and call HS2 a vanity project. Trains are inherently inefficient; the remarkable, valuable city-centre-to-centre public routes should be converted to roads.

Tuesday, 22 October 2013

UPDATE - STOP PRESS - GREENE KING -v- HMRC - The Guardian 2 DEC 13 (possibly the best newspaper in the world) reports this big tax case, where global tax planners Ernst & Young, billing 8% of tax-saved, in 2003 advised Greene King (2,300 pubs) to borrow money within the group - charging extortionate rates of interest in the UK with UK tax-relief - to be paid to their offshore selves somewhere that charges no tax. In paying the interest - the pubs, I suppose, are indulging in tax-evasion-capital-flight, draining the UK of much needed investment capital. WHO are the 3 judges? We hope they are not ex-Ernst & Young partners or other global planners embedded in government - who have a lot riding on this and similar double-bookkeeping fiddles. If it ain't an Arms-Length series of transactions - it ain't legal. IF the UK courts decide for the tax-collectors (which if they are honest folk, they must) - there will be hundreds of other big cases.We do not need Chinese cash or any other
“inward investment”. Barry North,Guardian Letters 18 Oct 13 “Who owns Britain” (below) maps the
circular trick where companies load themselves with “debt” and pay huge interest
to kill UK taxable profits. He tacitly accepts the tax-industry-PR false mantra
that such self-invoicing (via tax-havens) is legal. It is not legal in
UK, USA or OECD tax
law. HMRC can and do reject “artificial and fictitious” claims that are not: “1) At arms
length, or 2) concocted to avoid tax, or 3) not wholly necessary for the business,
or 4) not on normal commercial terms”. This is UK law. Many UK and USA back-duty
cases recover tax + penalties + compound interest + costs when tax
collectors retrospectively deny such false claims, e.g. for 25 past years. Some
tax evaders and advisers also go to prison. It is such false accounting, with
the complicity of auditors and corrupt tax officers (ENRON,
Parmalat,
Tyco, Olympus)
that siphons $1 trillion per year to tax-havens, now hiding
$32 trillion, which the source nations could today tax and repatriate. The
UK could and should rapidly
recover $3 trillion (3 years Budget) and the USA $16 trillion (the entire US debt) of the
assets gouged from our High Streets. GCHQ
and the NSA have all the records of the false transactions and bank
accounts. All realists accept that $32 trillion buys a lot of friends in high
and low places – but surely the Guardian is as sick of the tax-criminal imposed
global austerity as are 99.5% of UK citizens. Bang ‘em up! Repatriate
our money and build a great future for our grandchildren – without borrowing
“inward investment”.

Chris Huhne makes a strong argument for
rounding up tax-evaders and putting them in prison alongside benefit
cheats. (If prison deters crime, why don’t tax evaders go there? Guardian 14 Oct 13). However he underestimates
the scale of tax-evasion-capital-flight and what the UK can
repatriate, by 1,000 times; he talks of billions instead of trillions. Tax
Minister David Gauke recently wrote to me to stress his determination to collect
a few billion in evaded taxes over several years – equating to about half of one
year’s London bankers’ bonuses.

Studies by the OECD, Paris and one by Wall
Street economist James S Henry show there is $32 trillion (80 million global
jobs) tax-unpaid money offshore. The global total grows by $1 trillion annually.
The UK’s share of this vast
hoard is about $3 trillion (8 million UK jobs) - $16 trillion has been siphoned from
the US economy.

The illegality is glaringly obvious from
the term “tax-haven”, where tax-unpaid assets gouged from OECD economies are
secreted, most via clumsy false accounting, and undeclared for years, which is
against existing laws, and can thus all be legally seized using HMRC’s powers of
Protective Assessment, Penalties and Compound Interest. Such powers are applied to UK evasive
plumbers, dentists and journalists – but not against VIPs and politicians.
Thanks to the Guardian we now know that GCHQ knows exactly where the assets are.
$3 trillion is 3 years the total UK Budget; will sweep aside all austerity
measures; refill all UK banks; and create long term,
intelligent, sustainable industries and jobs.

Should our so called business leaders be
exempted from tax? When Sir Richard Branson’s private Caribbean Island Tax-Haven
home, funded by UK consumers, is invaded by vicious pirates or by a hurricane –
which police and armed forces will he beg for help?

Noel Hodson

Oxford

Astudyby James S. Henry,
former chief economist at McKinsey & Company, estimates that wealthy
individuals have $21 trillion to $32 trillion in private financial wealth tucked
away in offshore havens — roughly equivalent to the size of the U.S.
and Japanese economies combined.

• The detrimental effects of the unnecessary and enormous borrowings by some companies deserve greater prominence than just the last sentence of an article about Thames Water (Ofwat to halt Thames Water 8% price rise, 17 October). It is not just the avoidance of tax but the increase in prices to pay the interest and to still provide a profit that are hurtful. It seems to me the acquisition of a UK company by private interests typically goes as follows. Using a large loan the private company or fund buys a UK company that has no substantial debt – for example a utility company or a football club – then causes the acquired company to take out a big loan, the proceeds of which are paid to the new owner as a dividend, or some such, thereby extinguishing the owner's original debt. The transfer most likely avoids tax in any country.The UK company now labours under a large debt, restricting its ability to borrow for genuine business purposes and requiring higher prices for its goods or services in order to pay the interest, which may be set against profit for tax purposes. Not only does the loan carry a high rate of interest but, the new owner may even have a beneficial interest in the lending organisation.Some private owners will state they have never done all of the above and, in any case, it is all within the law. So, it is shrieking out for the law to be changed so that this series of steps is thwarted.Barry North

Saturday, 19 October 2013

The news that
Boris Johnson and George Osborne are selling the UK’s nuclear domestic power industry to
China – and presumably to any other
foreign bidder – is terrifying. They are afraid to sell the NHS to
America, so they sell off control of our
energy infrastructure instead. “Inward Investment” is borrowing by another name
and the capital inflow will cost the UK very dearly as China takes its
dividends, imports Chinese materials, supplies, managers and workers and holds
the UK to ransom for the next 50 years.

The UK does not need
foreign capital. We are the 7th largest economy and have been a
dominant trading nation for hundreds of years. The surpluses generated, in
excess of $3 trillion, have been siphoned via The City to tax-havens by
UK firms and individuals. Instead of
increasing the UK’s borrowings and paying the awful
price, government should instead immediately repatriate all the offshore assets
and invest them at home. Tax-Haven assets are by definition undeclared for tax.
GCHQ know precisely where the assets are hidden and what illegal false
accounting entries siphoned them from the UK. HMRC can
legitimately retrospectively assess the entire amount under Back-Duty-Tax laws
and bring the money back to the UK.

Would you
please put this plea for repatriation to your Party colleagues and please
raise the question in Parliament that I asked
last year “Who in government uses tax-havens?” The offshore assets
are controlled by 0.5% of the population so repatriating the untaxed funds ($3
trillion – 8 million jobs) will not lose votes for Labour and will probably win
over many of the 99.5% of honest tax-payers.

We do not need Chinese cash or any other
“inward investment”. Barry North,Guardian Letters 18 Oct 13 “Who owns Britain” maps the
circular trick where companies load themselves with “debt” and pay huge interest
to kill UK taxable profits. He tacitly accepts the tax-industry-PR false mantra
that such self-invoicing (via tax-havens) is legal. It is not legal in
UK, USA or
OECD tax law. HMCR can and do reject “artificial and fictitious” claims that are
not: “At arms
length, or concocted to avoid tax, or not wholly necessary for the business,
or not on commercial terms”. This is UK law. Many UK and USA back-duty
cases recover tax + penalties + compound interest + costs when tax
collectors retrospectively deny such false claims, e.g. for 25 past years. Some
tax evaders and advisers also go to prison. It is such false accounting, with
the complicity of auditors and corrupt tax officers (ENRON,
Parmalat,
Tyco, Olympus)
that siphons $1 trillion per year to tax-havens, now hiding
$32 trillion, which the source nations could today tax and repatriate. The
UK could and should rapidly
recover $3 trillion (3 years Budget) and the USA $16 trillion (the entire US
debt) of the assets gouged from our High Streets. GCHQ
and the NSA have all the records of the false transactions and bank
accounts. All realists accept that $32 trillion buys a lot of friends in high
and low places – but surely the Guardian is as sick of the tax-criminal imposed
global austerity as are 99.5% of UK citizens. Bang ‘em up! Repatriate
our money and build a great future for our grandchildren – without borrowing
“inward investment”.

Monday, 14 October 2013

Tax-Evasion-Capital-Flight is the worst crime and greatest treason people commit against their own country. The appalling state of Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Spain, the UK, and not forgetting near bankrupt America, paralyzed by the urgent need to borrow more than $16.5 trillion ($16,500,000,000,000) to meet its international debts; all testify to the sabotage and structural damage done by those few persons 0.5% of the population, who gouge out all the liquidity, claim tax-relief on the false accounting transactions and siphon out assets to be frozen in tax-havens.

If you really hate your country, your neighbors and friends - grab all the assets, pay no taxes, and F*** off with it to tax-havens. That will ruin everyone you know and rapidly wreck your nation. All countries can be like Greece with chronic unemployment, despair and rapidly growing fascism.

Money in tax-havens is by definition secret and un-taxed. In tax law we are guilty until we prove we have paid due taxes. The IRS and HMRC mechanism is to identify a tax-evading asset owner and issue a protective assessment, usually at the highest tax rate plus interest and penalties.

Now that The NSA and GCHQ admit that they have all the meta-data required to identify tax-haven asset owners, the world can expect to see $32 trillion of protective assessments issued this year. Enforcement and collection will pay all nations' deficits and debts. Then we can invest the stolen cash back in our own countries - and accelerate the global economy as never before.

Chris Huhne makes a strong argument for
rounding up tax-evaders and putting them in prison alongside benefit
cheats. (If prison deters crime, why don’t tax evaders go there? Guardian 14 Oct 13). However he underestimates
the scale of tax-evasion-capital-flight and what the UK can
repatriate, by 1,000 times; he talks of billions instead of trillions. Tax
Minister David Gauke recently wrote to me to stress his determination to collect
a few billion in evaded taxes over several years – equating to about half of one
year’s London bankers’ bonuses.

Studies by the OECD, Paris and one by Wall Street economist James S Henry show there is $32 trillion (80 million global
jobs) tax-unpaid money offshore. The global total grows by $1 trillion annually.
The UK’s share of this vast
hoard is about $3 trillion (8 million UK jobs) - $16 trillion has been siphoned from
the US economy, equivalent to the US deficit that is currently paralyzing the government.

The illegality is glaringly obvious from
the term “tax-haven”, where tax-unpaid assets gouged from OECD economies are
secreted, most via clumsy false accounting, and undeclared for years, which is
against existing laws, and can thus all be legally seized using HMRC’s /IRS's powers of
Protective Assessment, Penalties and Compound Interest. Such powers are applied to UK evasive
plumbers, dentists and journalists – but not against VIPs and politicians.
Thanks to the Guardian we now know that GCHQ and NSA knows exactly where the assets are.
$3 trillion is 3 years the total UK Budget; will sweep aside all austerity
measures; refill all UK banks; and create long term,
intelligent, sustainable industries and jobs.

*Leaders used to lead from the front; not lurk at the back like cowards, counting their ill-gotten gains.

Noel Hodson, Oxford.

UK 2013 Budget - £612 billion ($930 billion) (39% of
2012 GDP)

Letter to New Scientist 12 Oct 13 - Undoubtedly correct, Peter Turchin’s model
and book predicting outbursts of political collapse and social violence, which
follow (inevitable) economic cycles; are more frightening now, with 7 billion
expectant restless souls, than in 1590 – a base date he uses for trends.
(Pattern behind the shutdown – NS 12 Oct 2013). But we make our future and need not be victims of cycles. E.g.
Since 1590, surgeons have learned to wash their hands. The current danger can be
immediately remedied by (1) repatriating the $32 trillion (80 million jobs)
frozen by 0.5% of citizens in tax-havens; and investing it in sane sustainable
industries and (2) sharing global wealth throughBIRTHRIGHT, a necessary allocation of shares and
dividend income to every new born, as automation removes paid jobs and denies
access to the money-economy. These two steps, plus other changes, will create
unprecedented global wealth and fairer, stable governance. As President Obama
said “It is time to put away childish things”.

Thursday, 10 October 2013

UPDATE - 13 May 2014 - No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the US Surveillance State by Glen Greenwald - is a new book that fills the hearts of the deeply paranoid with joy. We neurotics, who exist in a grey vague state of doubt, cynicism and fear of government will be confirmed and justified by learning, for example, that all our internet modems and routers, made in China and America, have chips that also connect us to the snoopers - and record and feed back all our communications and browsing. "They" also use many tools to disrupt any internet use deemed by "Them" to be politically incorrect.

DO NOT BE AFRAID - BE VERY, VERY FRIGHTENED.

The debate or row about meta-data, US and UK, Chinese and Russian total surveillance, spooks, snoopers, spies and privacy rages on. Central figures such as US military prisoner Chelsea Bradley Manning, US fugitive Edward Snowden, Australian Julian Assange of Wikileaks, UK Alan Rushbridger at The Guardian and US Editors at The New York Times, The ICIJ - International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and The Center for Public Integrity in New York, have been joined by the UK's new head of military intelligence MI5, Andrew Parker.

As expected, Mr Parker stands shoulder to shoulder with the main snoopers; the US NSA - The National Security Agency and the UK's GCHQ - Government Communications Headquarters, and presumably with all well intentioned spy agencies around the world, who are keeping a very close eye on their citizens. And, of course, on all terrorists, pedophiles and benefits cheats. Who is missing from this list? Oh - could it be offshore tax-evaders who want to lend us back our own money at high rates?

Mr Parker, referring to recent revelations of mass surveillance programs such as PRISM, TEMPORA and others, criticizes all who publish leaked secrets about government surveillance, in particular The Guardian and New York Times who are publishing data stolen by Edward Snowden. The head of MI5 says that publication puts the spies at risk and sabotages their surveillance of terrorists. (53 UK people were killed by terrorists from 2002 to 2010).

UPDATE - 11 OCT 2013 - The UK's Guardian newspaper has been accused of treason by a rival, the Daily Mail (which supported fascism before WW2), for publishing the fact that we are all being monitored. In rebuttal, The Guardian today published supportive endorsements from most of the world's serious news media and many political commentators. As the US Fiscal Cliff looms - recovering $32 trillion (80 million jobs) from tax-havens becomes ever more urgent. Action this day!

Where's the Money - Who are the real saboteurs?

What is singularly lacking from the great international surveillance debate is the far greater sabotage and damage done to OECD nations, including the US and UK, of tax-evasion-capital-flight at the rate of $1 trillion a year to tax-havens. All terrorists need funds and all their funds go through tax-havens. All secret tax-haven funds are illegal in tax law. They are quite simply "false accounting" or "fraudulent conspiracy" or "wire fraud" - and so can be repatriated and taxed - and invested back into the countries of origin. The RED CROSS report this week that in Europe 20% live below the poverty line; that's 110 million citizens. 50 million Americans need Food Stamps and cannot afford health insurance. Countries such as Greece, Italy and Spain have 60% youth unemployment and are going bust, directly due to tax-evasion-capital-flight.

The ICIJ recently published 130,000 tax-fraud accounts in the British Virgin Islands. What are our governments doing about it? Nothing at all in the UK, other than an embarrassed silence. The Greek government has this week re-arrested a journalist who published 2,059 Greek VIP accounts hidden in Zurich, one of which held $500,000 untaxed assets, and now accuse him (again) of the crime of invasion of privacy. He must learn, in prison, that posh Greeks do not pay tax or invest in Greece!

We now know from recent leaks that Big Brother, The NSA, GCHQ and Mr Parker at MI5 know who owns the $32 trillion (80 million jobs) in tax-haven accounts and have copies of the past 20 years' transactions. Are these national agencies happy to see their countries sink into medieval poverty, to decline and fall - all to preserve the privacy of the 0.5% who have broken the nations' banks - and who refuse to return and invest the money?

Full marks to the spies for curtailing terrorists. No marks for conniving, through inaction, with tax fraud, wire fraud, false accounting and the wrecking of our vital economies. The rise of fascism and the very real immediate dangers of social unrest and crime are far greater threats to our democracies than terrorism. ACTION THIS DAY!

Two scientists have won the Nobel
prize in physics for their work on the theory of the Higgs boson. Peter Higgs, from the UK, and Francois Englert from Belgium, share the $1.2 M prize. In the 1960s, they were among several physicists who proposed a mechanism to
explain why the most basic building blocks of the Universe have mass. The mechanism predicts a particle - the Higgs boson - which was finally discovered in 2012
at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at Cern, in Switzerland.

I have written several articles on The Higgs Boson and the Higgs Field and read many others, but I still have no grasp on what it does or how it is alleged to work "adding mass to massless particles"; particles that combine to make atoms, that make the universe. HIGGS BOSON ARCHIVE UPDATE SEPT 2013

For example, here from Huff Post is one of the more accessible descriptions: By: Natalie Wolchover Published: 07/03/2012 07:58 AM EDT on Lifes Little Mysteries

I do not find it comprehensible or clear, but it is slightly clearer than other explanations I've read.

As a hobby - over the last 50 years I have been reading popular science and slotting the information into my own TOE or Theory of Everything. In the 50 year process I have become wary of theoretical mathematical physics - including I am afraid being now suspicious of The Big Bang, Inflation, Multiverses, String theories with limitless dimensions, Branes, and doom laden extrapolations from thermodynamics of our inevitable Universal Heat-Death.

The Standard Model (of the atom) even with The Higgs Particle, is still missing 80% to 90% of its mass (weight /energy). Galaxies, such as The Milky Way, are missing 90% of their mass. The foundations of our measurements and calculations, The Universal Constants, are probably not constant. We do not understand gravity, inertia (what keeps things in place), Blackholes (if they exist) or how your mobile phone waves /signals retain their coherence, data and identity in a universe seething with powerful radio signals. We have no understanding of Life - and science still treats life as an inconvenient truth; an anomaly. The Higgs Boson lives for a billionth of a billionth etc of a second before disintegrating into two (allegedly massless) photons. So, in constructing theories of everything, there is still everything to play for. It is as valid to describe The Universe in words as mathematically.

I picture an evolving, so ever changing universe, which emerges and exists (stands out) in a field (no parts) of light waves. Light is a visible small part of the complex electro-magnetic spectrum. Everything, including ourselves, is made of light; we see this when we explode uranium - in a brilliant flash of light. We can explode material things but the deepest mystery is how is light compressed to make particles. Did matter emerge only once, at the beginning, or is it a continuing process? I hope The Higgs addresses this question - but so far, I haven't found a description that makes the link, in terms I can understand. Now that the two main Higgs theorists have found their particle - and deservedly received their prize - would they be so kind as to take up Einstein's mantra "If you cannot explain it simply - You haven't understood it well enough" and simply explain the life and times of the elusive Higgs Boson and its invisible, undetectable field.

PS - Article from New Scientist Magazine - This accords with my TOE, as it might be part of the answer as how light is compacted into primary particles - requiring minimal energy. I emailed it to an expert on atmospheric refraction.

2 OCT 13 NO GRAVITY REQUIRED: This experiment bends light into a black-hole-equivalent,
via refraction. As black holes have masses of gravity (and thus matter), is
this how light converts to matter? Or is it still the job of the Higgs Boson
/Field? Is refraction a cause of star light bending as it skims the Sun’s
“atmosphere” - traditionally ascribed to gravity? Best wishes -
Noel